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Two Kinds of Prison: Reflections on Leaving Palestine

Brooke Atherton Qalqiliya, Palestine 29 July 2003

Every day that we visited the Qalqilia checkpoint, we watched the “progress” of the Israeli Occupying Forces’ Apartheid Wall which is holding 40,000 Palestinians captive in their own city, on their own land. Each day the fenced section of the Apartheid Wall on either side of the checkpoint looms closer to completion. In two days, trenches six feet wide and and equally as deep were dug on either side of the central fence. The next day, the Israeli Occupying Forces erected triangular coils of barbed wired eight feet high running the entire length of each trench. The concrete base for the central fence has been laid, and any day the 12-foot-tall fence will be erected, and possibly electrified. Brooke Atherton reports. 

Film review: James Longley's "Gaza Strip" (2002)

Nigel Parry 29 July 2003


Cover of the video/DVD. James Longley’s Gaza Strip is a 74-minute documentary filmed between January and April 2001, a period that stretches from four months after the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada — immediately preceding the election of Ariel Sharon as Israel’s prime minister — up to the end of Sharon’s third month in office. “I made this film,” Longley notes in the director’s commentary that accompanies the very highly recommended DVD version, “to satisfy my own curiosity about what was happening in the Gaza Strip since I found that it was very difficult to find information in the mainstream media and get a detailed look at what was going on, what people there were like, what they were thinking about.” EI’s Nigel Parry reviews the film. 

An appeal for Nablus

Fawzia A. Reda 29 July 2003

“For more than a year now, since April 2002, the cries of Nablus have been muted by the roar of jet bombers flying overhead and the blasts from tanks encircling and effectively laying siege to the city. At all times of the day and night, and often without warning, Israeli soldiers shell and shoot at the civilians of Nablus, who never know when or where to take cover. Children, women and men have been hunted, injured and killed.” Cultural Connexion founder Fawzia A. Reda makes an appeal for Nablus. 

Occupied peoples have the right to resist

Tom Wallace and Radhika Sainath 29 July 2003


“We are unwavering in our commitment to nonviolence. Due to these beliefs, we oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. As a result we have come under heavy fire in the Occupied Territories and in the media. Israeli officials and several right-wing Israeli and American pundits have embarked on a campaign to discredit ISM, by attempting to equate ISM’s principled and active support for Palestinian rights with terrorism.” Tom Wallace and Rakhika Sainath recently wrote this op/ed in The Jerusalem Post. 

Khalil Shikaki defends his refugee poll

Khalil Shikaki 29 July 2003

“The views expressed below by Ali Abunimah (“Who said Palestinians gave up the right of return?”, 23 July 2003) reflect the concerns and fears of many Palestinians in the absence of a serious engagement by Palestinian leaders who refuse to be open and frank with their public.” Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) responds to a recent EI article that criticised a recent poll by the center.